


I am forever lost in the warmth of your gaze

by lavenderlotion



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Erik Lehnsherr Loves Charles Xavier, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, M/M, X-Men: First Class (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23038630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion
Summary: With Charles by his side and an endless future bathed in warm sunlight, Erik let himself imagine what it would be like to be soft.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 16
Kudos: 53
Collections: Nothing Is So Beautiful As Spring Challenge 2020





	I am forever lost in the warmth of your gaze

**Author's Note:**

> **Day 6 - Sunlight**

Erik was anything but a soft man. He had been hardened by pain and sharpened by loss until he was nothing but a weapon, created expressly as a pet to serve the man that had taken from him everything he'd ever loved. Unimaginable things had been done to him at the hand of a series of monsters that had forever changed him. Shaw had twisted him from a little boy who wanted nothing more than to be safe into a man capable of committing horrors in the name of his revenge. Erik had always been self-aware enough to know that there was very little left within himself that was good, that wasn't tainted by the blood on his hands or the scars that ran over his skin.

But when Charles had first touched his mind in the freezing water, seeping through his thoughts when Erik's entire body had been locked up with tension and his mutation had been stretched so thin it felt like his entire  _ being _ was getting torn apart, he began to wonder. In the following weeks when he and Charles had worked together, he wondered. Gathering up young mutants and building a team of people who could do extraordinary things had allowed Erik to feel a little bit less alone than he had felt ever since Shaw first took his mother from him, and he wondered.

Was he really an empty shell of a person who'd been torn apart by a monster dressed as a man? There were times, often when he was training with Charles, when Erik was forced to wonder if that was really the truth. Perhaps, if he allowed himself to do something as dangerous as  _ hope, _ he could be something more. For so very long Erik had felt like nothing but cold, sharp metal. There had been no warmth to his life, not when warmth was nothing but a danger.

But Charles...oh, Charles was a warmth in a way no one Erik had met had ever been. Charles was an endless amount of sunshine breaking through an empty night and cutting across the freezing waters of despair Erik had found himself treading for so very long. Charles was everything Erik wasn't while being so many things that he was, and Charles was a  _ hope _ that Erik hadn't felt since the last time his mother had kissed his forehead and told him everything was going to be alright.

Sleeping with Charles, caring for Charles,  _ loving _ Charles were all things that allowed Erik to feel as though he could be more than what he had been made into. For, if someone as bright as Charles could care for him, was Erik really so evil? When they were together, it was like the sun was shining down on his face and warming his skin, but that feeling was entirely focused in his chest and burned every time he thought of Charles.

So Erik clung to him as tightly as he could without it seeming desperate but figured it wouldn't matter as Charles would know what he was thinking either way. He spent each night in Charles' bed and spent each morning thankful for it. Now, he watched as sunlight streamed in through the window of the mansion and caught the side of Charles' face. His cheeks were flushed in sleep and his lips were still a ruddy red from the night they'd spent together. His hair was laid out over his pillowcase messily, sticking up at angles Erik knew would hold until he wet it down. A single strip of bright sun caught his nose, highlighting the gentle arch, and played over the first few hairs of his eyebrow.

Erik looked at him, careless in his sleep in a way Erik hadn't been since he was only a child, and found that he felt quite soft. With Charles by his side and an endless future bathed in warm sunlight, Erik let himself imagine what it would be like to be soft.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://lavender-lotion.tumblr.com/)!  
> comments and kudos are much appreciated! 
> 
> i run an x-men discord server! check it out [here!](https://discord.gg/3uG3VNP)


End file.
